Making Ready for VHS to DVD

Question

Making Ready for VHS to DVD

Just took a bullet for my budget, and purchased the Canopus ADVC300 ... ("on sale") ...
For specs: http://www.grassvalley.com/products/advc300

I'm pretty new at this, so pardon my jargon-less terminology ...

First, realizing the Canopus is an 8-10 year old hardware product, am I missing something by not finding an "up to HD" converter box? (I may have a couple of hours to cancel my Canopus order ...)

Secondly, wondering if folks might suggest what 100% free app I might use to accept the on-the-fly FW input, and code it to hard disk?

I have iMovie 4 and 5, but read it can lose video and audio sync for long sessions. I plan to digitize 1 to 2+ hours of VHS in a session, to burn to DVD-DL disks. The Canopus ADVC300 claims to keep perfect A/V sync, so I'm guessing I also need to impose the same for my capture app ...

Will probably set up my QS 2002 Dual 1GHz under OS X 10.5.8 to be the work horse:

RCA VR678HF Video Cassette Recorder > RCA connectors > Canopus ADVC300 > FW > QS 2002 Dual 1GHz (with a dedicated hard drive)

Suggestions welcomed.

QS 2002 Dual 1GHz + DA Dual 533 (Mac Plus, Performa 6116, PPC 8500 G4/450), Mac OS X (10.5.8), Tiger 10.4.11 on Yikes! oc'd @ 450 + Sonnet G4/450 on 8500

Posted on Mar 4, 2010 6:54 AM

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Answer 1

MartinR

Level 7

25,322 points

Mar 4, 2010 7:13 AM in response to Bill Connelly

The Canopus products are fine products and completely up to date.

The Canopus ADVC-300 converts analog video to DV. There are a few HD converters on the market but if you think you broke your budget on an ADVC-300, the prices of the HD converters will take your breath away. More importantly, your VHS source material is the limiting factor; converting it to HD would get you nothing more than much larger file sizes and no better video quality.

You can use iMovie and QuickTime to capture video from the Canopus box. Of course you could always move up to Final Cut Express if you needed more editing power.

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Answer 2

Mar 4, 2010 2:50 PM in response to MartinR

I thought VHS was "analog" ... meaning somewhat continuous ... the more precise the sampling of, the better the digital output ... larger files sizes, yes ... but more info to display.

Know of any good tutorials on recording VHS / characteristics? illustrations of analog video to digital video?

I see canopus treats visual things as "3D" ... extracting audio as well ... by briefly looking at the manual, I see many parameters come into play:

*Image and sound* Default setting

Brightness 256 levels
Contrast 256 levels
Hue 256 levels
Saturation 256 levels
Sharpness 256 levels
Volume 256 levels
*Low tone* 31 levels
*High tone* 31 levels

Image Default setting
Sound Default setting

*Y/C separation setting* 4 options
*Audio AGC setting* 5 levels

Hmmmmm ... many things to ponder ...

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Answer 3

Mar 4, 2010 2:58 PM in response to Bill Connelly

I thought VHS was "analog" ... meaning somewhat continuous

VHS is analog linear tape, but by no means does "analog" mean "continuous" in any respect.

the more precise the sampling of, the better the digital output ... larger files sizes, yes ... but more info to display

Huh? Larger file sizes than WHAT? If you capture through a DV device as DV footage, the files sizes will be that of DV: approximately 13.3gb per hour of footage.

For a simpler solution, just purchase one of those VHS/DVD recorder combo units, although the built-in TBC on the ADVC300 should make for better copying.

-DH

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Answer 4

Mar 4, 2010 3:56 PM in response to Bill Connelly

The limiting factor really is the VHS tape. It has a limited number of lines of resolution, limited number of frames per second. If you capture into DV, the results will be just about the same as HDV. You can test this, of course, by hooking your VHS player to an SD TV, and then an HD TV. As long as your picture settings are similar, they should look the same.

By the way, high def does not necessarily mean larger files. HDV, a popular camcorder format, has the same bitrate as DV.

Many of us have done this sort of digitzation. VHS to DV is fine.

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Answer 5

MartinR

Level 7

25,322 points

Mar 5, 2010 12:20 PM in response to Jeremy Hansen

Jeremy,
If the OP were to go the HD route, and even assuming purchase of a Canopus ADVC-HD50 ($650) that can convert analog video to HDV, he would need at least iMovie5 to capture the video and it would result in QuickTime Apple Intermediate Codec based files requiring anywhere from 25GB to 50GB per hour of video. That compared to only 13GB per hour of DV video. That's what I meant when I wrote that HD would get him nothing more than larger file sizes and no better quality.

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Answer 6

Mar 5, 2010 3:03 PM in response to MartinR

Of course; that's logical. I capture natively without going to AIC. I edit in HDV as well, since I am doing very basic editing and do not feel a performance hit from using.

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Answer 7

Mar 5, 2010 5:24 PM in response to Jeremy Hansen

I have both iMovie 4 and 5. Read somewhere 4 was good, because it disposed of some scratch file, where the later versions did not.

Any advantages to chosing 4 or 5?

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Answer 8

MartinR

Level 7

25,322 points

Mar 5, 2010 6:12 PM in response to Jeremy Hansen

Jeremy,
You must be using FCPro. You certainly couldn't do that in iMovie or FC Express.

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Answer 9

MartinR

Level 7

25,322 points

Mar 5, 2010 6:19 PM in response to Bill Connelly

According to your profile, you're running Leopard (10.5.8). If your choice is between iMovie4 and iMovie5, go with iMovie5. Even though they are both technically obsolete at this point, the code base of iMovie5 is much closer to Leopard than iMovie4 would be.

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Answer 10

Mar 5, 2010 7:07 PM in response to MartinR

I capture with DVHSCap from the Firewire SDK and use ClipWrap to import.

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Answer 11

Mar 6, 2010 5:18 AM in response to Jeremy Hansen

After joining the Apple Developer's Site ...

Just downloaded "firewiresdk26.dmg", liking the idea of using the latest for Leopard 10.5.8 ...

So DVHSCap is used to ... (still reading)

And another free app, can be used to Import / Compress to a DVD format, and is ...

My concerns now are that iMovie 4 or 5 might not be up to using the latest system apps for Leopard 10.5.8, thinking iMovie is just a pretty face for the behind the scenes system routines.

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Answer 12

Mar 9, 2010 10:53 PM in response to Bill Connelly

Well my canopus ADVC300 arrived today ... very nice.

I am currently using the workflow:

Zenith XBV342 VCR (+RCA Audio/Video+) > canopus ADVC-300 ( FW) > iMovie 5 (+QS 2002 Dual 1GHz, OS X 10.5.8 ... DV+) > Toast 6 (+Compression ... Burn DVD+)

Evidently iDVD 5 doesn't run under Leopard ... so ... no pretty Chapter labeling? Maybe I can do more with iMovie after setting up the Chapters? a background for a future DVD Selection Window?

Summary: I use my Zenith to produce the VCR output in analog. The canopus ADVC-300 digitizes the analog in DVPro-NTSC and iMovie writes it to disk in DV format. Toast 6 takes that, and compresses it to VIDEO_TS format, and writes it to DVD.

Is that the best I can do without buying more software?

Thanks for you input.

I downloaded to Developer's package for FW, but haven't be able to get into it ... hints welcomed.

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Answer 13

Mar 10, 2010 6:28 AM in response to Bill Connelly

Sounds like a fine workflow. If you found a way of upgrading your OS, then you would be able to use chapters as you said.

The Firewire SDK, when installed, will create a Developer folder. Inside that is an applications folder, with DVHSCap. But that is just for capturing; I use it to capture or troubleshoot firewire problems. It sounds like you have a workflow already and do not need to use it for anything.

Jeremy

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Answer 14

Mar 10, 2010 7:10 AM in response to Jeremy Hansen

I dropped my QS 2002 back to Tiger 10.4.11, so now I have access to iDVD 5.

So ...

VCR VHS tape > Zenith VCR > canopus ADVC-300 > iMovie HD 5 > iDVD 5 > DVD Disk

To make sure I'm using the best possible formats ... the canopus ADVC-300 defaults to DV/DVCPro-NTSC Compression Best 4:3 Interlaced , which is what I need for iMovieHD capture?

Or should I change the rate to 29.97?

Then after iMovieHD captures that, I need to Export it as a .mov file, and pick that up in iDVD?

Or can I skip a step, by using the canopus to output the data for capture in another format? maybe MPEG-4? or other?

I want the final output to be SHD to create a DVD-DL (DL if necessary), and have Chapters that I can put in a Menu for selection as I enjoy my archived VHS tape on DVD.

If I should ever get a HDTV, I can use an upscaling DVD Player.

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Answer 15

Mar 10, 2010 7:18 AM in response to Bill Connelly

"I want the final output to be SHD to create a DVD-DL (DL if necessary), and have Chapters that I can put in a Menu for selection as I enjoy my archived VHS tape on DVD.

If I should ever get a HDTV, I can use an upscaling DVD Player."

Huh? What is SHD? If you mean HD, then you are out of luck. DVDs are not high definition. And they use one format: MPEG-2.

Yes, capture to DV. What do you mean "change the rate" to 29.97? You are capturing at that rate already, unless you live in a PAL country. Import into iMovie, export to iDVD.

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